


Sins of the Father

by bizzylizzy



Category: Naruto
Genre: Chronic Illness, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:40:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22576486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bizzylizzy/pseuds/bizzylizzy
Summary: These are the things you don't remember: how many pills your father took in the morning.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 57





	Sins of the Father

These are the things you don't remember: how many pills your father took in the morning.

Why he was never the one to get up in the night when you or Sasuke cried.

Why, despite that, he never seemed to sleep when you were older.

Why your father always seemed removed from life. How he seemed to reach this emotional distance when you would speak to him.

How he checked out sometimes, emotionally vacating the conversation and operating on predetermined logic and tradition, regurgitating old answers to new questions.

You remember the despair.

You remember feeling isolated.

You remember being _furious_ and worthless he would never engage your ideas. You could never budge him one millimeter from his chosen track, no matter what happened.

You wrote him off.

You don't remember (but you do, because it's hidden in your mind), finding your father passed out. You don't remember pretending not to see it, because it frightened you. You don't remember the way his thumbs pressed into his bloodless temples. You don't remember the careful way he stood or moved (but you do, you just didn't know why).

But now, you feel it in your bones.

Your father lived to be forty.

When you get up in the morning, creaking stages of agony, you remember how he moved. What you took for shinobi grace was aching care for a body full of agonies. When you count out your pills and powders and take them, but know nothing truly mitigates the damage, you think of him. Your mind begins fabricating or uncovering memories of your father's actions that explain and mirror your own. You remember pills in your hand going down his throat. You see him holding a joint, cradling his body in moments of weakness. You see him holding pills in a large hand, swallowing them all in one swift, bitter draft. At first, you had to take the pills one at a time to avoid choking, but now you have learned the certain flex of the neck that allows one smooth swallow. 

You see your future in your father's actions.

But your father lived to be forty.

It's none of it an excuse, but it is one of the reasons. You think, going back, your father might have been a weak man. You think he might have been waiting to die for years. You think he might have wanted to die, or been too exhausted by the act of living to attempt to shift anything from its path.

You are only twenty, and you can no longer formulate complex long-distance plans. You can only remember the tracks you set out so long ago, and you can hold firm to that course. You can no longer evaluate the right or wrong or wisdom of _The Plan_ given current circumstances. You can only hold one goal in your mind and take the next step to get there. Trying to conceptualize more than that is overwhelming. Impossible. It gets tangled in the pain of your bones, the cramping ache of your gut, the light heated feeling that comes and goes rapidly and mercilessly. You've passed out too many times this week, Kisame's unerring arm catching you hard enough to crack ribs already tortured from coughing.

You are a wreck of a human being.

But your father made it to forty.

You can make it a few more months.


End file.
